1.
THE POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF POST-MODERNITY AND OF
NEOLIBERALISM
Fernando Alcoforado*
Two factors were decisive for the production, trade and financial globalization occurred
in the world to promote the expansion of the world capitalist system: 1) the failure of
Keynesianism as economic policy able to leverage the development of central and
peripheral capitalist countries from the decade 1970, after the capitalism "boom" of the
"glorious years" of the 1950s and 1960s; and, 2) the crisis that led to the demise of the
Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist system in the late 1980. They paved
the way for change in the modus operandi of the world capitalist system with the
implementation of productive, trade and financial globalization on a global scale when
the neoliberal ideology was introduced which calls for the dismantling of the state - as
an economic agency, to provide public services and social protection - of precariousness
of labor relations and employment and restraint of trade union and popular struggles,
the internationalization of capital in all its forms (productive, commercial and financial)
and the adoption of market deregulation policies and removal of protectionist barriers,
liberalization and opening of markets of countries, central and peripheral, of world
capitalism.
This change is realized with the arrival to the government of the liberal and conservative
forces in England in 1979 with Margaret Thatcher; in the United States in 1980 with
Ronald Reagan; and in Germany in 1982, with Helmut Kohl. In England, the first
neoliberal policies implemented were deregulation, privatization and trade liberalization
which were incorporated by multilateral institutions, mainly the IMF and World Bank,
and implemented in countries that use these institutions, especially the peripheral
countries. The failure of Keynesianism as economic policy able to leverage the
development of central and peripheral capitalist countries from the 1970s and the crisis
that led to the demise of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European socialist system in
the late 1980s triggered the definitive end of Modernity that was born with the
Industrial Revolution in England in the eighteenth century.
The end of Modernity which was based on industrial society also coincided with the
advent in 1962 of the concept of post-industrial society formulated by Daniel Bell,
author among others of The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic
Books, 1973). In Bell's opinion, at the economic level, the post-industrial societies are
characterized by the growth of services sector as the main economic activity, replacing
so in importance the production of goods of industrial society. In terms of class
structure, industrial society was based on the proletariat to produce goods, while in the
post-industrial society prevail technical professions and intellectual technological
sectors. Alain Touraine, author of La Société Post-Industrielle (Denoel Editions, 1969),
also stressed the importance of knowledge in the new post-industrial context.
What comes to be a post-industrial society? This is a society that increasingly employs
their work in the service sector and less in the industrial sector, so that the production
process would keep less to do with the characteristics of the manufacturing process. The
post-industrial society would be characterized precisely by the logic of services. Leaves
off the modern factory and appear trade, services, finance, leisure, education, scientific
research as the new era bases. These post-modern production processes would not
require more factories with assembly lines, but programmed processes based on techno
science hence the central role, for this kind of thinking, the 3rd. Technological

2.
Revolution, the based on microelectronics - that demand the growing implementation of
computerized information systems.
For postmodernism, Modernity was based on the sustained production in large industry
and in Post-Modernity trade and services would have a broader social space than
industrial production. The ideologues of Post-Modernity say that we would be in a new
era, postmodern, in which no longer be worth the past theorizing that built their
arguments on capital, capitalism, value, productive work, revolutionary proletariat, etc.,
from the industrial logical, manufacturing. In other words, the death of Modernity
implies the death of Karl Marx, as well as any totalizing metanarrative. Thus, the design
of which would be the post-industrial society, postmodernism goes to the denial of all
totalizing perspective and for the affirmation of fragmentation, the discontinuous and
chaotic.
However, it is a fallacy to say that growth of the service sector vis-à-vis the industrial
sector, denies what Marx discovered about the functioning of capitalism, since this
should not be confused only with industry and cannot be defined by the production
material, i.e., for the production of values of material use. Much of what is today called
the services sector constitutes in fact capital that drives the means of production and
labor power in order to generate and realize the added value. So what sets productive
work, whether industrial and service sector, is a criterion of valuation of a social relation
and non-production material.
In addition to affirming the existence of post-industrial society to replace industrial
society born in the eighteenth century, many proponents authors of Post-Modernity
advocate also falsely the end of social classes, so that the post-industrial society would
be at the same time and for the same reasons, a post-class society. Post-Modernity
would be the result of the defeat of socialism, that is, the defeat of a metanarrative
which proposed alternative opposite to the capitalist order. To neoliberal capitalism
would need to all recognize it as an unquestionable reality, against which could not be
built totalizing alternatives. What to do with this new postmodern era? How to act
consistently on the world? The postmodern answer is that we should not try to engage in
a global project.
The option offered by the Post-Modernity political point of view for the people of the
world is limited to the following alternatives: 1) capitulation / resignation / conformity
with the historic victory of the neoliberal global capitalism; or, 2) challenge the existing
order, but not from an overall perspective, global leading to the replacement of
capitalism, but in a fragmented perspective of struggles challenge the existing order, but
from an overall perspective, global, leading to the replacement of capitalism, but in a
fragmented perspective of struggles. The practice posture of postmodernism is not to
challenge the capitalist logic as it is indeed. Deliberately, the Post-Modernity defends
the thesis that it is impossible to contest a winning system and here to stay, the
neoliberal capitalism.
Despite the neoliberal dictatorship imposed globally, the current crisis of neoliberalism
manifested in the global crisis of 2008 demonstrates its inability to resume growth /
economic development in the countries acceding to this recipe policies and the world
capitalist system as a whole. The retrograde political character of Post-Modernity and
neoliberalism presented in this article will be completed in the next article (final) to be
published under the title THE IMPERATIVE OF ENLIGHTENMENT

3.
REINVENTION TO MEET AND WIN NEOLIBERALISM AND POST-MODERN
THINKING.
*Fernando Alcoforado , member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor of Territorial
Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and
consultant in strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is
the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova
(Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado.
Universidade de Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e
Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX
e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of
the Economic and Social Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe
Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora, Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e
combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011)
and Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012),
among others.